


The Flying Cloud

by themantlingdark



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-13 21:05:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16899828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themantlingdark/pseuds/themantlingdark
Summary: For this prompt from raven-brings-light:“... a human AU where Loki is a birder and while out in the woods meets Thor who’s out backpacking/camping for a week?”





	The Flying Cloud

 

  
  
  
  


Loki had the goldfinches to thank--or blame, when the sightings were few--for his birding habit. The previous owners of his home had had a hand in it too. They had planted perennials in the flower beds. Daylilies, of course, but also purple coneflowers. The latter were not far from the living room windows, where Loki sat reading on weekends. When the plants went to seed at the end of summer, the finches came to eat, perching on the steeply domed seedheads, barely causing them to stir. Loki had seen motion out of the corner of his eye, abandoned his book, and stared for hours. The animals seemed weightless. Sprites or spirits, dipping and bobbing through the air, chirping with squeaky-toy voices, wearing feathers as yellow as yolks. After sunset, Loki had plugged stats into whatbird.com until an assortment of candidates that met his criteria had been offered. He’d found the goldfinch, but in the course of his search he’d been surprised to see so many other colorful things. The western tanager, with its pink face and black jacket, looked like the extravagant cousin to his goldfinches. The painted bunting looked like something out of a rainforest or an artist’s imagination. Loki hadn’t known anything so colorful lived on his continent, let alone in his home state. 

 

Prior to buying his house, Loki had lived in a series of apartments with no balconies, no window baskets, and no gardens. He’d seen sparrows. They had brightened the dull concrete blocks with their unfettered movements, always so like the scattering of blown leaves. And there had always been pigeons. Their iridescence was a mystery to Loki. He didn’t know how feathers came to look like mother of pearl--or how mother of pearl managed it, for that matter. But the birds had been easy to take for granted. Ubiquitous. Uninterested in him. Seemingly devoid of mystery. He walked past hundreds every day until they became another feature of the city. One that sparkled and cooed and took off with a shocking slap of its wings and the whistle of air between its feathers--but one that did so almost predictably. Their presence was pleasant, but not unexpected, like the sun in late July. 

 

Seeing the finches had been like snow in summer. Captivating and perplexing. Loki couldn’t fathom why such tiny, fragile things were endlessly calling attention to themselves. Their movements were indiscreet. Their voices unmistakeable. Their color a scream. And then he’d seen the female, with her sensible muted feathers, and he’d remembered old biology classes that had lain under inches of dust on the shelves of his brain. Sexual selection. If the male didn’t look good enough to eat, the female wouldn’t give him a chance to pass on his genes. 

 

Loki’s standards weren’t as high as a female bird’s; he found all the finches equally, impossibly beautiful. And his eye was roving. There were so many species. 

 

Loki began to feed them so that they’d spend more time in his yard and hold still, relatively speaking. Blue jays came, sometimes mimicking the calls of hawks to scare the other birds from the food so that they could gobble up all that they wanted. Mourning doves arrived in pairs to the tune of their whistling tail feathers, sporting dusty pink breasts, blue eyeliner, magenta toes, and iridescent cheeks that flashed purple or green depending on the angle. He saw house finches, streaked with seeming-brushstrokes of cranberry. Grackles, with their muscular bodies, swaggering gait, rusty voices, and colors like oil on water. And, of course, cardinals, the final nail in the coffin, sealing Loki up with his love. 

 

Red wasn’t the word for it. The color put blood to shame. Then there were the crests, like crowns or tiny party hats. The high, clear voices they sang with all day. The effortless speed and grace. And the female’s version of dull surpassed the brightness of most species’ best male specimens. Loki loved her warm brown body, with its daring flashes of undiluted red brightening the tip of her crest, her tail, and her wings. There was even red above her eyes, like little flaming eyebrows. He had a loyal, flirty pair of the birds who came to his feeder every day. His king and queen. The male often fed the female. Loki was jealous that he couldn’t set sunflower seeds in her bright poppy beak. 

 

He couldn’t tear himself away from his back window. 

 

But he had to. 

 

To make it up to himself, he ordered a bird photo booth and set it up in his yard. He filled the bowl in front of the camera with nuts, seeds, dry fruit, and freeze-dried mealworms. The first thing he did when he got home from work was check the photos. Day one was slow, as the object was new and it made the birds nervous, but by day two, they had accepted it and there were thousands of pictures. Sparrows, finches, cardinals, jays, and, to Loki’s surprise, downy woodpeckers. He hadn’t even known he’d had them. They sported fuzzy, fluffy grey mustaches that made them look almost fake, like tiny plush toys on which the features had gotten slightly out of scale due to the limits of machinery and human hands.

  
  


With the fire lit, Loki sought ways to feed it. He took long, meandering walks through his neighborhood searching for birds, often abandoning the sidewalks and wandering into backyards, winning himself strange looks and questions like “Can I help you?” and “Are you lost?” He sat in parks all weekend, watching the trees, seeing little figures hopping from branch to branch, hearing new voices, recording them, and playing the calls of likely culprits on his laptop at home until he landed on the right singer.

  
  
  


Rather than saving up his vacation days to use around Christmas--when it was so cold he just sat inside with his books the whole time--he took a week off in the fall to visit Catskill Forest Preserve. He would see New York’s usual suspects, and, if he was lucky, he’d catch a few out of towners who were en route from Canada to their favorite winter getaways down south.

  
  


The best time to see birds was often early in the morning. They started singing before sunrise and started eating at dawn. Not wanting to drive through the park in the dark every day and risk hitting a deer, Loki reserved a campsite. That way he could roll out of bed and start birdwatching. Then he remembered it would not be a bed. He’d need a sleeping bag. And a tent in case it rained. He couldn’t imagine needing much more than that; he planned to spend all but eight hours of each day on his feet, peering between branches in the hope of seeing feathers and the gleaming black beads of eyes staring back at him. 

 

Since he had begun birding, belief in elves and fairies was slowly making unexpected sense to him. There was something otherworldly about birds. They were silent when they wanted to be. Curious. Inquisitive, as he’d recently discovered while watching chickadees and tufted titmice--they would eat from his hands if he held still long enough. They were possessed of knowledge he could never gain--what it was to fly with wings, to fit into such tiny spaces, to weave nests, lay eggs, navigate the planet by sight and scent, and to be familiar with a god’s eye view. Certainly the world they inhabited was not quite the one that Loki lived in. Their values not his own. And the scale of their lives was different. He was heavy. Gravity had a much greater hold on him. 

  
  


The campsite he’d picked out--somewhat blindly, basing it on the map and what seemed most likely to be isolated--was at the westernmost edge of North Lake on a tiny cove and was almost everything he wanted. It had been his second choice. The one next to it would have been better, as it only had a neighbor on one side, but it was one of the few spots that had already been reserved, so Loki settled for the one beside it. There were trees with dense undergrowth surrounding each campsite, providing more privacy than he expected. The bathrooms were close, but not so close he’d have to hear them. And there was a clear view out across the lake. He could already see ducks as he pulled in, their sleek silhouettes showing black against the sparkling white of sunlit water. When he explored the shore, he found turtles stacked like pancakes, lazily sunbathing on a log, and a yellow-rumped warbler washing in a shallow spot at the lake’s edge. He watched, gaping, until it flew off, and took the sighting as a good sign.  

 

Once he had his tent set up, he put a bottle of water and a granola bar in his bag with his field guide, and set out in search of more birds.

 

The air was cool enough with autumn’s arrival that he didn’t break a sweat while he was walking. Miles of mountain trails meant he always had something different to see. This, in turn, meant that he lost track of time. It was dusk when he made it back. His thighs and calves were aching from the hills. His head was full of white-throated sparrows, with their yellow eyebrows; winter wrens, who looked like they’d been designed by some charming illustrator from the nineteen-fifties; a hermit thrush, who had so resembled a baby robin Loki had done a double-take and fretted about the whereabouts of its parents before he caught the brown coloring that was not a robin’s dusty grey jacket and got out his field guide; a Blackburnian warbler, whom Loki wanted to invite home to live with him; and a blue jay, who was visibly hoping that Loki would drop his granola bar.

 

Park trails had always felt springy beneath Loki’s feet. He had assumed the same would hold true for the rest of the ground. After an hour spent lying on it with only a sleeping bag between the earth and his body, he realized that not only was the ground very hard, it was also lumpy and cold. It never warmed up, only siphoned more and more warmth from his skin until his teeth were chattering and his backside was numb. After another hour spent squirming and shivering, he dragged his sleeping bag into his car, fully reclined the front seat, and was slightly less cold and uncomfortable there--though no more able to sleep--until the sky at last began to grow light. 

 

The clothes in his bag were cold and briefly chilled him after he added a few layers to his outfit. He thought of running in place or doing jumping jacks, but didn’t want to spook the wildlife. The birds were already singing and it would have been a shame to interrupt them. Their voices cheered him as he sat at the picnic table the park provided, eating an apple and trying to blink the sting of lost sleep from his eyes. He’d forgotten about his dependence on caffeine. Even a can of Coke would have been welcome. He was getting a headache now in its absence and he hadn’t thought to bring Excedrin. He drank water and hoped that staying hydrated would count for something.

 

It was still too dark to truly see, merely brighter than it had been. Stars were visible between the branches above, brighter and more numerous than Loki had thought possible, looking like flecks of silver borne on water, blurring into a haze as they got denser and further away. He could smell the mushrooms he had seen everywhere on his hike yesterday. Their powdery, damp scent, like moldy bread and flower beds, mingled with the wet odor of decaying green from the lake and the umber tang of fallen oak leaves. Autumn had been damp after the drought of summer, and the fungi were coming to life while all the larger things above them were slowly going to sleep.

 

The sky’s glow was growing in the east. Indigo brightened to ultramarine, then aqua, then that always-unexpected green that came just before the sun’s warm tones took over. When, at last, the red eye peeked over the horizon, it did so coyly, through the lashes of the tree trunks on the far side of the lake. Streaks of orange light hit the tips of the trees above Loki’s camp, painting them a dusty coral that the camera in Loki’s phone failed to properly capture. He tinkered with the colors in editing until they were slightly less wrong.

 

He half wanted to shower--mostly to soothe his joints and warm his skin--but it would’ve meant missing out on the best hours of birding, so he splashed cool water on his face, scraped on more deodorant, and hoped the animals couldn’t smell his dirty hair.

 

In a small wood at the edge of the mountain, Loki came across an unexpected band of tiny birds. Different species, but nearly all the same size. Most of them he’d seen before, but the black-throated blue warbler was new to him, and, though it wouldn’t stop moving, was easily identified by its pattern. In a larger tree not too far off, ruby-crowned kinglets fluttered beneath the leaves, seeming to kiss the undersides of the foliage. Loki knew they were eating insect eggs. It was the behavior that gave them away as much as their high, tiny voices and their comically small size. Their patterns were blurred by their constant darting and flapping. Loki wanted a whole flock of them zipping through his house. Life had never been as sweet as it was when he was looking at them.

  
  


At noon he returned to his camp to grab more layers and his gloves. The day was supposed to be the coldest of his seven at the park, with clouds moving in in the early afternoon. And the mountains themselves, where Loki was headed next, were colder and had higher winds. When he popped his head through the neck of a thick sweater, his gaze was perfectly aligned with a loon who was floating, motionless, on the lake in front of him. Impossibly sleek. He wished he could hear its call. A haunting thing like a woman wailing and the howl of a wolf. But the sight was more than enough. The bird was not one he had expected to see and he was blushing with the surprise. Through his binoculars he could make out the white patterns on its neck and wings, but not, alas, its red eyes.

 

A family of ruffed grouse crossed the mountain trail in front of him as he ascended. The birds were only visible on the bare path. Their impeccable camouflage let them vanish in the dead leaves and underbrush on either side. It left Loki feeling like he’d seen a mirage--or small group of ghosts. 

 

The trail grew more winding, zig-zagging up the mountainside to keep its surface at a manageable incline. It meandered between trees and occasionally used the rocks as a staircase. Loki could hear birds, but the sight of them was blocked by branches. 

 

In a dense grove, sheltered from the wind, Loki paused to have his lunch. He could hear someone ahead of him on the trail but couldn’t tell if they were on their way up or down. In either case, the birds would likely be quiet--or leave--at the sound of the other hiker, so he wanted to wait for the coast to clear and the birds to go back to their business so he’d have some hope of seeing them--or at least hearing their calls. 

 

While looking up, he saw an odd thing on a branch above him. At first he thought it was a nest, but the longer he stared, the more certain he was that he saw talons gripping a branch and a large body above. He backed away in every direction, but the trees were so numerous and so close together his view was blocked no matter where he stood. He opted to climb the tree directly across from the bird and hope for a long enough look that he could figure out what he was seeing. 

 

Pines weren’t quite as easy to climb as he remembered them being in childhood. The branches were still plentiful and stacked up the trunk like the rungs of a ladder, but Loki was no longer four feet tall and fifty pounds, which complicated things. When he finally achieved the necessary height, he had to step out onto a branch slightly to see between the other boughs. It was wobbly, but worth it. A great horned owl was sleeping not more than fifteen feet across from him. Or, rather, trying to sleep. It was peeking at him with one eye, likely wishing he would leave. Then it looked to its left and opened both eyes. Loki followed its gaze. Standing at eye level, perhaps twenty yards away, was a man with a camera--and an enviable lens--aimed at the owl. Loki wanted to ask the stranger if he’d be willing to email him a shot of the bird, but he didn’t want to speak and scare the owl away. The photographer was standing on the next diagonal of the trail and it occurred to Loki that this was probably the person he’d heard ahead of him. He understood now why he hadn’t seen him. He was nearly as well camouflaged as the grouse family had been. Dressed all in dull grey, he blended in with stone, dirt, and the trunks of trees. The only colors on him came from his long, gold hair and his rosy cheeks. 

 

Loki had to amend that when the man lowered his camera to reveal two eyes that were visibly blue even at this distance. Pretty face. Upturned features, delicate and sharp. Big ears--possibly pointy--balanced by a deep jaw, a long neck, and all that hair. Miles of it. Honey blond, but not from a bottle. His fingers were long and thin on the camera, narrow where they met the palm. Not the meaty, horrible mitts Loki thought of when he pictured large men, and this man was large. Tall and broad shouldered. Everything around him looked tiny. Loki tensed when the blue eyes began to scan the trees. They went wide at the sight of his face amid the branches. Loki startled in turn at being seen, flinched, and lost his balance. His field of vision filled with the frosted green of wildly thrashing pine needles as he bounced down the boughs on a rapid descent to the ground. A deep, clear call of “No!” rang in his ear and he supposed, very briefly, that this was how he was going to die. His life didn’t flash before his eyes. His thoughts were of the lack of skill in his limbs, unable to arrest his fall, and the two beautiful faces that would likely be the last he saw of this world. Not bad notes to go out on, he had to admit.

  
  


Even at a sprint, it took Thor two minutes to make it down around the bend and to the next stage of the trail. It took another minute to work out where the man had landed. And then Thor wasn’t sure what to do. The man was curled on his right side in the bright copper needles that blanketed the ground beneath the pines. Thor knelt down by his head to watch and listen for breathing. The man’s breast was rising and falling slowly and air was puffing in and out his nose. His face had been scratched by branches in a few places, but not deeply. There were slightly raised pink lines with just a few tiny beads of red along their centers running across the edges of his cheeks. There were pine needles in his mouth, so Thor cleared them away with his finger and got a faint response--lips twisting and a tongue trying to spit out more needles. 

“Can you hear me?” Thor asked gently, and got a quiet “mmm” and a wince and a few tears in reply. 

There was no cell service. Thor couldn’t look anything up or call for help. He wanted to scream. 

“Can you wiggle your toes?” he asked, but got no response. “Are you awake?” he tried, and got only another “mmm” in answer, which was what everyone said in their sleep. He pulled off the man’s gloves and tickled his palms. The fingers curled and the hands pulled back at the wrists in reaction. Then he took off the man’s left shoe and sock and tickled the sole of his foot until the toes flexed and the ankle twisted and the foot escaped from its tormentor.

 

Thor smiled and let out a trembling breath while he put the shoe and gloves back on. Not a dead body or a broken neck, thank heaven. Just an awful bump on the head and maybe some broken bones. He searched the man for a wallet with ID but found only a locked phone, unbroken, in the back pocket. He laid his coat over the stranger to keep him warm in case of shock, then looked for anything that might have fallen from his person. He fished a small bag from some low tree branches and found a pair of binoculars on the ground a bit further away. Still nothing with a name on it. Not seeing any other signs, Thor made himself a pile of pine needles to sit on while he waited. 

 

Thor knew brains did odd things when they were injured. Hypothermia was often misinterpreted as its opposite by an oxygen-deprived mind, and people who were freezing to death on mountaintops tore off all their clothes and dived into snow. Thor had had a concussion once as a kid. He remembered the events leading up to it, but not the impact itself--with the concrete, after he fell off his skateboard--and the day following the injury had been a blur. 

“What’s your name, hon?” Thor tried, when ten minutes had passed. He saw the man’s forehead crumple and then his eyes opened. They were green and not focused on anything in this world. He looked lost. And so young. Too young to have come this close to death. 

“Can you tell me your name?” Thor asked. The green eyes blinked but the lips remained slack. “What’s your name, sweetheart?” Thor coaxed.

“Loki,” The man said finally, then frowned and artlessly spat out more pine needles, pushing them from the side of his mouth and letting them slide down his cheek.

“Loki  _ what _ ?”

“Corbeau.”

“Where are you from, Loki Corbeau?” Thor asked, smiling now, leaning down and putting his fingers on the man’s neck while he looked at his watch. His pulse was at about sixty-six beats per minute, clear and even. Nothing alarming about it. 

“New Jersey.”

“All right, Loki Corbeau from Jersey, are you here with anyone?”

Loki blinked once and stared for a long time. His handsome face twisted into a strained, mournful shape and he shook his head faintly.

“With you?” he tried. It was a guess, and Thor thought of a young boy faced with an old riddle. There was something unfair about it. It made him feel as if he was being cruel. 

“That’s right, you’re here with me. I’m Thor, by the way.”

“Thor,” Loki repeated, and closed his eyes again.

“Stay with me.” Thor squeezed the man’s hand. The fingers had been visibly unbroken when he had tickled them, which was not something Thor could confidently say for the rest of the bones in Loki’s body. “Do you know where we are?” Loki’s eyes slowly opened again. He looked half in a dream. Perhaps deeper.

“The woods?” Loki tried. 

“That’s right. Do you know which woods?”

Loki frowned, squeezed his eyes shut tight, and shook his head.

“Catskill Forest Preserve ring any bells?”

“Oh, yes, for the birds,” Loki remembered, nodding and smiling. “Like the owl we were looking at.”

“You’re here birding?”

“Yeah.”

“Any luck beyond the owl?” Thor asked. Loki hadn’t opened his eyes again. His face was going smooth. He seemed to be receding, slipping under some water Thor’s eyes couldn’t see. 

“Mmm.”

“What else did you spot?”

“So many,” Loki murmured, and his lips went slack again. 

 

Thor called Loki’s name softly a few times and then decided to let him rest. It took the body a minute to walk off any injury, be it a stubbed toe, a twisted ankle, or a bitten tongue. The brain would likely be no different. 

 

“Can you stand up?” Thor asked, after letting Loki sleep for another five minutes. “We’re going to get cold if we keep sitting still.”

 

It took three minutes of coaxing, but Thor finally got Loki onto his feet and walking. There was no limp and when Thor asked Loki if he hurt anywhere, he said no, apart from his headache, which he attributed to a need for caffeine. Thor was fairly certain the man had no idea where they were going and was merely following along. He didn’t like to think where Loki would have wandered off to if he had fallen like that while alone. 

“We’re at least a hundred miles from Jersey,” Thor noted, slowly descending a rock staircase and letting Loki use him as a railing. “Are you staying in a hotel?”

“Umm... no, I’m staying here.”

“Camping?”

“Yeah.”

“Which site?”

“It’s,” Loki began, but shook his head.

“That’s all right,” Thor soothed, taking Loki under the arm and leading him down a bumpy section of the path. “We can always go to the office and have them look it up.”

“I’m on the lake,” Loki said, brightening, smiling at Thor with eyes and lips alike, so sweetly Thor couldn’t help but smile back.

“North Lake or South Lake?” Thor asked, and the way Loki’s face fell made him wish that he hadn’t.

“I can’t remember.”

“Doesn’t matter. They’re connected. We’re neighbors either way.”

  
  
  


When Loki woke, he was in a warm, soft bed beneath so many layers of blankets he could barely move. There was a hot water bottle tucked into his left armpit and a knit cap on his head. Everything was quiet. No hum of electricity or roll of traffic. Only the occasional call of a crow. The curtains were open and he was surrounded by windows. The walls at the edge of the bed were curved aluminum that hugged the mattress. The paneling above was pale wood-print laminate. It was the strangest room Loki had ever seen. 

 

When he looked outside, the sky was grey, but still light, though perhaps only barely. Branches were swaying and shedding leaves. With the trees as markers, he could see the clouds rushing past high above, cowing the world below with their silent roar. He struggled out from beneath all the sheets and comforters and saw a kitchen sink not fifteen feet away with a window over it looking onto a lake. Against the wall to his right was a dinette reminiscent of a restaurant. The house was no more than eight feet wide. Trailer, he corrected, and looking again at the curves and aluminum, suspected that he was in an Airstream. 

 

Everything smelled faintly of woodsmoke and wool. Loki wasn’t sure if the former was coming in the windows from the fire he could see outside, or if was also woven into the upholstery. The latter scent was definitely coming up from the hypnotic red Shiraz runner on the floor. 

 

Small photographs of every imaginable animal climbed up the arched walls. Loki lost twenty minutes looking at them. Elk. Bears. Penguins. Whales. And all the birds of paradise. 

 

Peering out the door, Loki found the handsome face he had seen earlier on the mountain trail, bent over a fire now, glowing gold against the grey of the woods all around it. Loki remembered climbing a tree to get a look at an owl and finding both the bird and this man. Remembered falling, but not landing. Remembered bits and pieces of walking back down the path, always with the man’s hand on his arm, but he’d lost the bulk of that journey. Thor, the man had said at some point, Loki was fairly certain, but then he second-guessed it when he recalled that Thor Industries had purchased Airstream. 

 

His face itched. When he scratched a spot on his cheek it stung and his finger came away sticky and shiny. He sniffed it and caught a bitter antiseptic scent mingled with petroleum jelly.

 

He let himself outside and a warm voice said hello.

“Hello,” Loki nodded, smiling shyly, suddenly embarrassed at having fallen out of a tree and rendered himself helpless in front of a stranger.

“How are you feeling?”

“Weird,” Loki said, laughing and giving a slow shrug.

“Here’s soup for now,” Thor said, smiling as he ladled some into a bowl. He laid it on the picnic table, which was already set for dinner. “And those will be ready in another ten minutes,” he nodded at two foil packets that were resting on the grill above the fire. 

“Smells delicious. I take it you’ve done this before,” Loki said, letting the steam from the soup warm his face. It hadn’t occurred to him that you could eat more than granola bars when you went camping.

“I cook like this more often than not,” Thor said, tossing his head at the trailer. “You saw how tiny my kitchen is. And everything tastes better when it’s cooked over a fire anyway.”

“Do you live in there full time?”

“Yep.”

“Here?”

“No, all over,” Thor said. “But I come here as often as I can. The facilities are good at this campground. And mountains always make for great photos.”

Loki blew on a spoonful of soup then hummed when it hit his tongue.

“This is good,” he gasped, audibly surprised.

“Thanks,” Thor laughed, with mock sarcasm in his voice and a genuine smile on his face.

“No, but, like,  _ stupidly _ good.”

“Well, you can get just about anything freeze dried these days, so I’m not hurting for ingredients.”

 

Loki looked out at the lake, so different now without the sun on it, all its colors muted, reflecting the silver sky and the dim bark of the trees. 

“I think we have the same view,” Loki said, narrowing his eyes, remembering the turtles from yesterday and the loon he’d seen earlier. “We’re in the little cove, right?”

“We are. West side of North Lake,” Thor confirmed, grinning at Loki. Loki felt like an idiot for being so pleased to have Thor happy with him over something so simple. It was like being praised for knowing how to tie his own shoes at the age of twenty-four. “Do you drive a green Mitsubishi Mirage?” Thor asked.

Loki gave a slow, comical wince and wrinkled his nose.

“I’m afraid so.”  

“Then you’re right next door.” 

Thor joined him and they finished their soup, then moved on to the foil packets, which were full of cashews, onions, and root vegetables that were as delicious as the first course.

“You eat better here than I do at home.”

“I’m spoiled,” Thor shrugged. “My mom taught me how to cook.”

 

With their bellies full, they walked around to Loki’s campsite, hearing the grass rustle and the leaves crackle under their feet. Geese flew over in long, flowing Vs, honking some message Loki could never quite understand, always seeming to announce the season.

 

“Did you get here today?” Thor asked, peeking into Loki’s tent and finding nothing inside.

“No, I got here yesterday.”

“Where did you sleep?”

“In the car.”

Thor looked back and forth between Loki and the car and raised an eyebrow.

“You’re, like, six foot two. How did that work out for you?”

“It was... slightly less awful than being in the tent,” Loki admitted.

“Did you bring an air mattress?”

“No.”

“Foam pad?”

“Nope,” Loki shook his head, smiling ruefully at himself all the while.

“What’s your sleeping bag rated?”

“It was, like, four-and-a-half stars on Amazon,” Loki shrugged.

Thor started to grin, then bit his lip to try to stop it.

“What’s so funny?” Loki asked. 

“You’re,” Thor began, then closed his eyes and shook his head to hide--and hide from--his own facial expression, “adorable. Sorry. Sleeping bag ratings tell you what temperature they’re good down to, and they assume you’re sleeping on top of a pad and wearing long underwear while you’re at it.”

“Well… shit,” Loki sighed. 

“Where’s the rest of your stuff?” Thor asked. “Clothes and all that.”

“In the car.”

 

Loki unlocked the doors and handed over his sleeping bag. Thor took a peek at the label and huffed.

“Well, you tried. It claims it’s good down to twenty degrees, but you can tell by the shape alone that’s a fib.”

Loki smiled at the generosity of Thor’s vocabulary, smoothing a lie into a fib. 

“What’s the right shape?”

“The right shape is you,” Thor said. Loki was grateful for the onset of dusk and the weak dome light in his car, as his cheeks had gone palpably red. “It should have your silhouette so you’re not wasting energy heating these empty corners. And this is too short by at least six inches.”

“That’s what she said,” Loki nodded, and Thor dissolved into giggles with him. 

“Come on,“ Thor sighed, patting Loki on the back and tossing the sleeping bag up in the air, catching it in the crook of his arm. “Grab your clothes. You’re staying with me.”

“Oh, no, please, I’ve already been such a pain in the ass. You don’t have to-”

“Loki, you’ve got a concussion and,” Thor glanced back at the tent, “not much else. If you don’t stay with me I’ll just be up all night fretting about you, so be a doll and spare me the insomnia.”

“Thank you,” Loki grinned, ducking his head and darting into the car to grab his bags.

“You’re welcome. Come on. We’ll go scald ourselves in the showers, blow dry our hair, and when we’re done we’ll have s’mores.”

 

When it came time to shower, Thor grabbed his things and Loki realized he’d made a number of oversights. He had, for reasons that now eluded him, assumed the campground’s baths would be something like a hotel’s, with soap, shampoo, blow dryers, and towels provided. Thor politely refrained from laughing aloud when Loki explained this. He simply shrugged and said, “I have plenty,” before fetching another towel.

 

The stalls were quiet, which was a relief. There would be no waiting. They were private as well, which Loki found slightly disappointing. Thor was wearing a thermal henley with four buttons at the top, only one of which was buttoned, which gave it an inviting air. His biceps looked like they might rip the seams of the shirt. And his waist increasingly looked to Loki like it needed to be pinched and tickled and perhaps belted with some legs. Arms at the very least. His jeans were a perfect fit and what they were fitted to all looked perfect to Loki’s eyes. He had been hoping for confirmation.

 

Thor listened while they were showering. He knew Loki hadn’t used the body wash yet because he had it in his own hand and Loki hadn’t asked to swap. The conditioner had a pump and was quiet. So it was just the shampoo clicking in the stall beside him for a third time now. Thor also knew it was easy enough to repeat a step in the shower on a day when you didn’t have a concussion.

“Loki?”

“Yeah?” 

“That’s the third time you’ve washed your hair,” Thor said gently. “You all right?”

“I-” Loki began. 

Thor waited a thirty seconds but nothing else came.

“Loki?” 

“Hmm?”

“Time for conditioner.”

Thor waited until he could smell it.

“Ready to swap for the body wash?” Thor called, hoping he had asked in time to cut off a second--or third--application of conditioner.

“Yeah.”

Thor had planned to simply reach around the wall and set it inside Loki’s shower, but then he heard the scrape and jingle of the rings against the curtain rod and Loki was standing in his stall with a bottle in each hand. His skin had gone pink with the heat, blushing deepest at his breast, and his hair was curling around his face in black arcs that sent water dripping down onto his shoulders like rain.

“You all warmed up?” Thor asked, handing over the body wash. 

“I think so.”

“Oh shit, look at that shoulder,” Thor winced, and Loki turned to give Thor a better view of the bruise that had bloomed over his right deltoid.

“You should see the other guy,” Loki quipped, and won a laugh from Thor that was worth the contusion.

“How’s your head?”

“Aches,” Loki admitted. “Hurt when I was scrubbing my hair. Right…  _ here _ .” He ran his finger over the goose egg on the upper right side of his skull.

“What do you usually take for pain?”

“Tylenol and ibuprofen.”

“I’ll get you some when we get back home. Wait here,” Thor said, and briefly disappeared around the corner to turn the water off in Loki’s stall. “I shouldn’t have left you alone in there, sorry,” Thor said, shaking his head at himself. “Have you been getting dizzy?”

“I wouldn’t call it dizzy exactly,” Loki said, narrowing his eyes as he sought the words. “It’s something different. Blank, I guess… and sleepy.”

Thor gave him a nod and a sympathetic smile and closed his eyes to lather his hair. 

 

Loki forgot his washing in light of the view. There were miles of smooth, rosy curves. All that rich blond hair was spilling down Thor’s back beneath the spray, sending suds into the cleft of his ass and over his cheeks. Ordinarily the dim yellow light would have seemed dingy to Loki, but it flashed gold when it hit the water that was running down Thor’s skin. If this was the payment for making a fool of himself, Loki was going to make a habit of falling out of trees.

 

Thor did not hear the click of the body wash bottle’s cap while he was washing his hair. It didn’t come while he was conditioning either. When he was finished he found Loki exactly where he’d left him, bottle forgotten in hand. 

“Here,” Thor said, taking it and tipping it over. He poured some into Loki’s cupped palm and put the bottle away so that Loki wouldn’t end up repeating himself again. 

 

Thor only had the one blow dryer, so he gave it to Loki while he did his own hair under a hand dryer. This part would be easy at least. Loki’s hair would be dry when he was done so there’d be no need to revisit the task.

 

All the light was gone when they got back. Thor flipped on some solar powered lamps and grabbed a hand crank flashlight, which he offered to Loki while he gave him the tour, which consisted of showing him where the bathroom was, as it was the only thing you couldn’t entirely see from every other point in the trailer. After that, Loki tossed back a few painkillers and walked up and down the room with the flashlight, peering at the photos on the walls, just as Thor had seen him doing through the window before dinner. 

“Still up for s’mores?”

“I don’t want to go back outside, sorry,” Loki said quietly. “I think I’ll get cold.”

“We can do them on the stove,” Thor smiled. “It’s gas.” 

 

They sat at the dinette eating their desserts, dunking them in hot milk and then drinking the lightly sweetened remainder. Loki was still aiming the flashlight at photos, staring and smiling.

“Did you take all of these?” Loki asked.   
“I did.”

“So much traveling.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ve been lucky. A lot of them are assignments. The local stuff I do mostly on my own, though.”

“All the birds,” Loki marvelled.

“Yeah, they’re funny. They’re either the easiest or the hardest.”

“How so?”

“Some are curious and come looking for me. Land right on my camera or steal my lunch. And some hear me coming and fly the fuck away.” 

Loki made a knowing hum at Thor’s answer.

 

Thor was just opening his mouth to detail Loki’s sleeping options when he felt Loki’s toes tap the tops of his own, flex lightly, and slide up until they were at his ankles. Loki then took Thor’s hands where they were folded on the table and gently pried them apart so that he could hold them. They both sat watching Loki’s thumbs bounce back and forth across Thor’s knuckles.

“Your hands are already cooling off,” Thor murmured, and pressed Loki’s fingers between his palms. “There’s no electricity at these campsites, otherwise I’d turn the heat on for you.”

“They’ll warm up once we go to bed,” Loki shrugged, and Thor wondered exactly how Loki meant those words. 

“Was that mattress okay for you?” Thor asked. 

Loki wrinkled his forehead, then looked back over his shoulder at the bed.

“I slept there?” 

“Yeah. For a couple hours,” Thor nodded. Loki’s face went blank and his eyes turned inward. He shook his head. “It’s all right,” Thor soothed. “You body-slammed a planet this afternoon. It’s a miracle you’re still breathing. You’re allowed to be forgetful for a while.”

“Still… sorry I left the bed all unmade.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

Thor could feel Loki’s toes curving around the outsides of his ankles and squeezing them.

“So,” Thor said, trying not to laugh, because footsie was a lovely thing about which he had entirely forgotten, and everything he had to say felt wonderfully light and simple after such a long day. “This,” he patted the tabletop, “drops down and the back rests fit on top of it to make a bed. I’ve slept on it a couple times on hot nights because my mattress is memory foam and it gets warm.” Loki nodded slowly. “I can sleep here-”

“I don’t want to kick you out of your own bed.”

“Thank you,” Thor smiled, “but you’re welcome to if it’ll keep you comfortable. You can sleep here on the dinette if you like, but you seem to run cold, so I don’t know how much you’d actually enjoy it. And the other option is we can both take my bed. There’s an accordion door there behind you that closes it up. Helps hold in heat. I run hot-”

“I’ve noticed,” Loki said, ducking his head as he spoke, blushing into his chest. Thor had to turn his face away and grin at the fridge for a few seconds before he could speak.

“So I don’t think we’d get cold. Plus that way I can keep an eye on you in case you forget where you are and decide to take off.”

“Shit,” Loki whispered. 

“Yeah.”

“You’re sure you don’t mind?” Loki asked. “You’ve already put up with so much from me-”

“Shh,” Thor waved him off. “It’s fine. I’m just glad you’re all right.”

“‘All right’ is too kind,” Loki huffed, shaking his head and shutting his eyes. “I’m a mess.”

“After the fall you took, a concussion, a bruise, and a couple of scrapes is better than all right. I thought you were dead.”

 

Thor set their plates on the counter and leaned against the wall. “Have you had enough to eat today? I can do pancakes or something if you’re still hungry.”

“I had… an apple? I think? for breakfast. Granola bar for lunch. And now the s’mores… I feel full.”

“We had a fairly dense dinner,” Thor nodded, and Loki looked confused. “Soup and roasted veggies with nuts,” Thor reminded.

“Sorry... I-”

“It’s okay,” Thor said. “I don’t remember what I ate two days ago. Your brain is probably just focusing on the important things. You didn’t want to go back out in the cold to toast s’mores, which was a good call. I think you’re doing all right.”  

 

They took turns brushing their teeth in Thor’s tiny bathroom. Thor’s bed was only accessible from one side, so he asked Loki to get in first and take the half by the wall. The hope was that if Loki tried to wander off into the park in just his pajamas in the middle of the night, he’d wake Thor up in the process. 

 

Loki curled up on his left side. There was a good chance Thor would think it was to avoid putting weight on his bruised right shoulder, which would make Loki look innocent. It seemed polite, too; turning his back after the thousand kindnesses Thor had shown him seemed unthinkably rude. But, really, no other position would let him watch Thor half as well. If he lay on his back, he’d have to turn his head, which seemed even less subtle than fully facing Thor like this. 

 

Thor was helpfully setting a light on the hamper at the head of the bed while his hair unhelpfully fell in front of his face. Loki was pleased with the lighting. It showed off Thor’s bones, which were strong and high. Enviably symmetrical. Loki hoped his own appearance wasn’t too absurd. His hair had never been on good terms with blow dryers, and he knew it was now an enormous fluffy mass around his face. At least his cheekbones were decent. He crossed his fingers that, with the dramatic lighting, they were enough to make up for the frizz.

 

“Would you like me to leave this on?” Thor asked, nodding at the light. “It wasn’t too sunny today, but I think the charge should last until dawn. You can take it with you if you need the bathroom.”

“Yes, thank you,” Loki nodded, and Thor leaned over on his elbow and began tucking Loki in, pulling the blankets up high behind him to insulate him from the outer wall, fussing and folding them carefully under his chin. 

“Do you have plans for birding tomorrow?” Thor asked, settling into the bed and curling toward Loki. His voice was softer now. Higher, though not high. Quiet. Full of lovely sounds that were only audible because Loki was so close. Those tiny, damp, secret pops in the back of the throat and behind the teeth. The workings of the tongue. The tap of soft wetness against its own kind. Loki leaned forward and kissed the corner of Thor’s mouth. He saw Thor blink a few times in quick succession and briefly worried he’d done something wrong, but then Thor turned his head and pecked a matching kiss on Loki’s mouth. “Did you want to get up early?” Thor tried, while Loki scooted forward and started kissing across his jaw. “Sunrise is at a quarter to seven,” Thor continued, turning his face to let Loki reach the bend behind his jaw below his ear. “Twilight should start at a quarter past six.” Loki rested his lips against Thor’s neck, breathing in clean skin and the faded perfume of laundry detergent on Thor’s sweatshirt. It was a crew neck, which Loki found irksome. It showed hardly any skin and he couldn’t open it from the top. His fingernails felt an insatiable urge to run themselves up and down Thor’s chest until little pink lines bloomed in their wake. Not scrapes. No blood drawn. Just the pleasant scratch one would give an itch. 

Loki huffed an impatient grunt out his nose about the neckline. Thor misinterpreted it as being about unreturned kisses and matched the trail up Loki’s jaw, put three on his neck, and then one on his lips. 

“The birds will be up and about by then,” Thor murmured. “I can set an alarm so you won’t miss them.” Loki slid a finger into the collar of Thor’s shirt and ran it along the cotton, grazing Thor’s throat with his knuckle. “It’s early now. Not quite nine. Even if we got up at five we’d still get eight hours of sleep.” Loki gave a light tug and Thor leaned forward and kissed him twice on the mouth, slowly, and with a gentle pull on Loki’s lower lip at the end of the second one that made Loki whine. “Though I think all of your atoms might appreciate a chance to sleep in,” Thor smiled. His eyes went so small and sharp when he grinned. It should have been frightening. But Loki couldn’t think of anything further from. 

“Give us a kiss,” Loki murmured, rocking his weight back and forth once, the way one would urge a horse. A mute whine. Loki felt laughter puffing out Thor’s nose against his cheek as Thor carefully kissed his way around the scrapes on his face and back to his mouth for more long, soft pulls that were warm and deep and so like his voice it made Loki wonder whether his own kisses worked that way too.

“I just don’t want you to hate me in the morning,” Thor said, rubbing the pudgy spot under Loki’s chin with the side of his finger, “for letting you sleep through your birding. Keeping you up all night kissing.”

“Hate you if you don’t take off this sweatshirt,” Loki smiled, hiding from the half-truth behind closed eyes. “No,” he sighed, “I won’t hate you… but I might rip the shirt.” 

 

Thor laughed again and was still shaking with amusement when he kissed Loki’s forehead. It felt to Loki like approval.

“I’ll take it off if I get some answers out of you,” Thor said, low and smooth near Loki’s ear. Hardly a vibration in the broad reed of his throat. Just the swirling dance of breath, teeth, and tongue.

“Do you need to get up for anything?” Loki asked.

“No, I’m on vacation. Autumn passes fast. I like to stop moving and watch it happen when I get the chance.”

Loki nodded.

“I think I’ll skip the alarm then if you don’t mind,” Loki sighed. “Just the thought of hearing one makes me want to cry.”

“And the birding?”

“I’ll take my chances with the afternoon crowd. And I’ll still have four more mornings left if I’m feeling up for it.”

Thor nodded. Loki raised one expectant eyebrow. Thor sat up and pulled his sweatshirt over his head, shook it out, and floated it down over Loki’s feet. 

 

Loki went to reach for Thor’s chest, lifting his arm at the shoulder instead of the elbow, and froze as a stabbing pain shot through the joint.

“Feeling that fall, huh?” Thor winced in sympathy.

“Holy shit,” Loki gasped, and felt tears stutter down his cheeks.

“Want some more painkillers?”

“Please,” Loki nodded.

 

After pills and a sip of water, Loki seemed to withdraw again. Thor knew that pain had a knack for making a body think of itself. Probably a wise policy as far as longevity went. Still, he felt shut out and nervous, fearful he’d missed more serious injuries. When he saw Loki’s slack lips puffing out with slow, deep, sleeping breaths, Thor slipped his sweatshirt back on and inched close enough to watch the pulse in Loki’s left wrist where his hand rested palm up on the pillow. 

  
  


When Thor woke, it was still dark outside, but the light hadn’t yet run out of charge. Loki was watching him. Or looking at him, anyway. Watching perhaps implied something more alert than Loki could be credited with at present. With his hair still wild from the blow dryer and his lips puffy with sleep, Loki looked even younger than when Thor had first seen him. Fragile. Almost small.

“How old are you?” Thor whispered.

“Twenty-four.”

“God, you look sixteen.”

“How old are you?” Loki asked.

“Thirty-three.”

“You look young too,” Loki said, and Thor huffed.

“If I look young, it’s only because they hire people my age to play teenagers on TV.”

“No, it’s not that.” Loki narrowed his eyes. “You look young in a different way.”

“I think that’s called  _ old _ .”

Loki nudged Thor’s thigh with his knee in a mock kick, then ran his foot up and down the outside of Thor’s calf. Thor wondered if Loki remembered the footsie he’d started earlier under the table. Or the kisses from before they fell asleep. 

“No,” Loki sighed. “Something else.”

“Ancient?” Thor tried, and Loki nudged him again.

“Classic,” Loki said. “Classics don’t age.”

“You’re a cheese ball,” Thor snorted, laughing into his chest.

“Cheese balls are delicious,” Loki sighed.

“You better not be talking about those dusty orange puffy things.”

“No,” Loki groaned, wrinkling his nose and sticking out his tongue. “Those big nut covered ones at parties. Sometimes I make them just for myself.” 

“Oh, good,” Thor murmured, nodding. “Yes, those are amazing.”

“Anything with pecans.”

Thor hummed and sagged into the pillow. Loki was still staring. His eyes were pointed somewhere below Thor’s chin.

“Didn’t I make you take that shirt off?” Loki asked.

“You did,” Thor smiled. “I didn’t know if you remembered that.”

“It’s back on,” Loki complained.

“Well, you tried to touch my chest and your shoulder hurt so much you basically passed out, so I didn’t see much point.”

“Typical,” Loki griped, scowling and shaking his head. “Shitty body.”

“It was doing just fine until you threw it out of a tree.”

“That was your fault. You can’t just walk around looking like this and expect the rest of us to come through it unscathed.”

Thor rolled his eyes and ducked his head, gently rubbing their noses together.    

“It’s still on,” Loki said.

“What?”

“Sweatshirt.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Thor muttered, sitting up and taking it off again anyway. “You still can’t lift that arm.”

“You can lift it for me,” Loki explained, waiting for Thor to settle, feeling the bed shake with his silent laughter. “On your back,” Loki directed. 

Thor was nodding, still noiselessly laughing. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Loki lift his head. He laughed harder, but took the hint, raising his arm and putting it under Loki’s neck. Loki shuffled forward and settled against Thor’s side. 

“My arm,” Loki reminded. Thor kept giggling and gently laid Loki’s right arm on his chest. “There,” Loki sighed, flexing and straightening his fingers, running his nails up and down the center of Thor’s breast. “Perfect.”

“A panacea,” Thor teased. “Anything else? Head on a silver platter? First born?” 

“I kind of want a cheese ball now. And crackers to put it on.”

“Mmm, that does sound good. You’ll have to give my chest back so I can go get the ingredients.”

“No deal,” Loki yawned, patting Thor’s sternum. “The chest stays here.”

“As you wish.”

“ _ Chests _ ,” Loki amended, softly to himself, spreading his fingers wide and tapping each of Thor’s pecs.

 

Thor gave Loki a light squeeze and kissed his eyebrow. Buried his nose in the hair at Loki’s crown and lay still, breathing him in. Some living chemistry there, beneath the shampoo’s floral perfume and the mineral notes in the park’s hard water, spoke to Thor in a tongue he knew. A sister to the language held in the scarf he had permanently borrowed from his mother. Little molecules that passed some test inside him. Perfectly pronounced the shibboleth. In less than a week, if all went well, he’d be burying his face in this pillow, hoping to catch a few more words before they were swept away by sunlight, fresh air, and the scent of his own skin. 

 

He felt Loki’s fingers slow, then stop, then limply curl against his chest. Felt his own eyelids grow heavy and fall.

  
  
  
  
  


The sky was a bright, icy silver when Thor opened his eyes. The branches of distant trees were blurred purple and blue by the mist that had curled up out of the lakes and wrapped its arms around the mountain. Only the reds and golds of nearby maples stayed true, glowing with the light that filtered through them from above. 

 

Thor's favorite season had officially arrived, and, for the first time in years, the right weather had come in with it. Cool and damp. No longer summer's punishing heat, beating life down all day so that everything, even the Earth itself, seemed to sweat through its clothes and wilt by noon. The cicadas had stopped drilling holes in everyone's nerves with their droning buzz. The crickets were slow and cautious. The smothering green was bleeding out, leaving amber and stillness in its wake.

 

Loki's arm was slung low around Thor's waist and his right leg was thrown over Thor's thighs. Thor wondered whether or not Loki would remember how he'd gotten there. If he'd approve of the arrangement either way. If he'd remember their laughter and playfulness from the night before. Remember whatever they got up to that day. 

  
  


When Loki woke, he made no sign of finding his circumstances strange. Merely sat up, clambered over Thor, and scurried off to the bathroom. He seemed to know where it was, but the place was so small it wouldn’t have been difficult to guess if he’d forgotten it. Afterward he resumed his position tucked into Thor’s right side. 

“I drooled on your shoulder,” Loki whispered, scrubbing it off with his sleeve.

“Mmhmm,” Thor agreed, and ruffled Loki’s hair and kissed him on the forehead. 

Loki mouthed the skin at the edge of Thor’s breast, just before it curved down under his arm, rolling it between his lips and dragging his teeth across it from side to side.

“Hungry?” Thor tried, and felt Loki nod. “Here,” Thor said, sliding his arm out from under Loki’s neck and hopping onto the floor. “Get in my warm spot while I make breakfast.”

 

Loki shuffled into the toasty divot Thor had left for him and made a pleased hum, then pulled the blankets over his head and disappeared. Thor put his top back on while Loki wasn’t looking.

 

“Coffee?” Thor called.

“Oh my god,” Loki moaned, throwing off the blankets and launching himself out of bed. “I’ll give you my first born for that.”

 

Thor’s belly buzzed with pleasure at the reference. Loki hadn’t lost all of last night. Some of their conversation seemed to have survived, which was better than Thor had let himself hope.

 

They sat down to pancakes with spiced apple compote and Loki resumed his game of footsie as they ate, petting the tops of Thor’s feet with his toes, tugging at his pant legs and rubbing his ankles.

“Are you going to make me burn that sweatshirt?” Loki asked, smiling across at Thor from above the rim of his coffee mug.

“Plenty more where this one came from,” Thor said.

“Who are these idiots who’ve been selling you clothes? I’m going to give them a stern talking-to.”

“You want me to freeze?” Thor pouted.

“No, you can live in the shower.”

“Thank you,” Thor laughed. 

“I was spying on you in the baths last night,” Loki confessed, and Thor nearly snorted his coffee through his nose.

“Yeah, and if that was what passes for stealth with you, please don’t ever take a job with clandestine services,” Thor begged.

They giggled together. When they settled, Loki’s eyes went unfocused and Thor’s muscles tensed.

“You were washing your hair,” he remembered.

“People generally do when they bathe,” Thor nodded. 

“Not like that they don’t,” Loki breathed. “You were…” he shook his head.

“Some people wash their hair more than twice when they’ve bumped their heads,” Thor noted, shuffling his feet to jostle Loki’s toes.

“Did I really?”

“Three times,” Thor confirmed. “It was so cute I wanted to eat you.”

“I wish you had,” Loki sighed, and pinned his grinning lips flat between his teeth while Thor went pink and waggled his eyebrows.

  
  


Uncertain of how much of the day Loki would retain, Thor took photos of as much of it as he could manage--short of slowing things down and interrupting conversations. He realized he was absent from all of the photos on his own walls. All of his photos, in fact. Never turned the lens back on himself, even with his phone. His mother took snapshots of him when he went home to visit, and he took his share of her and of his father. But the rest of the time, he remained firmly behind the camera. He made a point of getting Loki in the shots he took, hoping it would help Loki to remember, or make it real for him if his mind let go of it all again.

  
  


“This arm,” Loki gritted, in bed later that night, trying to rest his palm on Thor’s chest.

“What did we have for dinner?” Thor asked.

“Is this a quiz?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t name it,” Loki shrugged. “Tasted like navratan korma, but I didn’t count to see if you used nine things. Lots of nuts and dried fruit and cream in it. Green beans too, I think. Rice to go with it. S’mores again for dessert.”

“And what was the first bird you saw today?”

“Common redpoll,” Loki remembered, smiling. “Looked like it had dyed its hair and stained its shirt.”

Thor grinned at him.

“Did I pass?”

“You did,” Thor nodded, and gently pushed Loki onto his back, then stretched out on top of him, holding himself up slightly on his elbows and knees. 

“Do I get to name my prize?” Loki asked, raising his eyebrows expectantly.

“I’m going to regret this,” Thor muttered, “but sure.”

“Sweatshirt,” Loki said. 

“To keep?”

“No, just off,” Loki decided, and Thor huffed and knelt to struggle out of it.

“There,” Thor sighed. “Happy?”

“Almost. What was the test for?”

“To see if you’re remembering things,” Thor said. “I’m not sure people with amnesia can really give consent.”

“Does that mean I have some consenting to look forward to?”

“Probably,” Thor nodded. “It’s a wide world. Now that you’re yourself again, I can set you loose on it. Stuff you back into that tent next door and have this bed all to myself again. Wear my sweatshirts in peace.”

Loki nodded, trying to keep a straight face, and tugged at the waistband of Thor’s pajama bottoms, inching it down his right hip.

“These have to go too,” Loki said.

“I gather,” Thor smiled, and scrambled out of them.  

“Mine as well.”

Thor helped Loki out of his bottoms and top, leaving his achy right arm for last, sliding the shirt around it without moving it.

“Tell me you have lube,” Loki sighed, sinking back against the pillows. Thor bit his lip and made a low sound of realization.

“I do,” Thor nodded. “But it’s going to be really cold.”

“Cold lube is better than no lube.”

“Famous last words,” Thor said, rooting around in the hamper.

 

Loki yelped and thrashed when the gel hit his skin.

“I thought about warming it up in my hand first,” Thor admitted, “but I wanted to see you squirm.”

“Sex is cancelled,” Loki said firmly, then broke into a grin. Thor kept painting their cocks with chilly lube while Loki held his squeals behind his lips. “You could wipe your hand clean on that sweatshirt,” Loki offered, when Thor had finally finished. Thor narrowed his eyes and smeared the excess off on Loki’s stomach. “That’s just going to end up on your belly in about three seconds,” Loki noted.

“Quiet, you,” Thor said, and sank down against Loki until what he’d said was true.

“Here,” Loki murmured, and reached between them to keep their cocks lined up so that the heads brushed together when they moved their hips. 

 

Thor’s hair was slowly falling down around their faces, letting light in between the strands, leaving them to kiss in a little gold tent scented with skin and shampoo. Loki got their jaws all sticky when he abandoned their cocks in favor of stroking Thor’s cheek.

  
  
  
  


They got up early on Sunday, knowing they’d need to check out by eleven. They exchanged emails, phone numbers, Snapchats, Instagrams, and Loki’s address. The morning flew by in last-minute birding and rushed, reluctant packing. They said goodbye with a fierce hug that went on for ten minutes and ended with a dozen long kisses and tears in their eyes. 

 

For a while they followed the same route on the highway, and Loki’s eyes got wet again every time he looked in his mirror and saw the shiny Flying Cloud floating along behind Thor’s pickup truck. And then Thor pulled off for gas and Loki lost him. The rest of the drive passed by in a dull blur.

  
  


Loki apologized to his birds by filling all the feeders, scrubbing the bath, and scattering seeds on the patio. They seemed to forgive him quickly.

 

When his phone chimed with a text, he nearly fumbled it in his excitement. A photo and message from Thor. He was standing with a tall, lovely woman who could only be his mother. The sides of their faces were pressed together and they were smiling and waving at the camera.

 

_ Hope you had an easy drive home. My mom says hi. I’m staying with my parents for a while before I head down to Kentucky. They live in Connecticut, which, last time I checked, was quite close to New Jersey. xoxo _

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> please don't comment or repost.


End file.
